![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/RSSPoster_PRO\/cache\/f5763_screen-shot-2017-10-14-at-12-30-41-pm.png?resize=640%2C399&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I have a new habit.<\/p>\n
It quenches a thirst. It soothes a weakened, battered piece of my psyche. It repairs my wounds and unleashes me, more powerful, into my day. It fulfills the saddest, most regrettable pieces of myself.<\/p>\n
It may also be a habit that you want to pick up. You too may find that this simple step into the breach of social engagement online can make you\u2026 Fitter. Happier. More productive. But this isn\u2019t about you. It\u2019s about me\u2026 me and my new habit.<\/p>\n
From the start, it\u2019s important that you know that I don\u2019t really have the luxury of purging myself from social media. I like to think I\u2019m the kind of person who would retreat from all of it and live in the moment, depending on the internet only when necessary, when the left brain is making a calculation and requires data. But I\u2019ve never been free of the excuse that \u201cI have to be on Twitter\u201d for work.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve retreated from Facebook and Instagram. They are still on my phone, but I check Facebook very rarely (my long-distance friends don\u2019t love this) and I am on Instagram less and less since that filthy algorithmic feed<\/a> was introduced.<\/p>\n Twitter, however, has grown increasingly important in my world. Of course, the tech world has adopted and sustained Twitter through thick and thin. We remain, we have our own insanely insular conversations, and we spend a considerable amount of our day wading through a rapid current of information, from the insults to the clapbacks to the breaking news to the late takes to the shade to the #truth.<\/p>\n Since the death of Google Reader, the most reliable place to filter breaking news is Twitter.<\/p>\n And so I stay.<\/p>\n And I, like 328 million others, witness the carnage of public discourse.<\/p>\n The horror.<\/p>\n Twitter is a big pile of hate. It doesn\u2019t take long to understand the extent.<\/p>\n Just look at Google searches around Twitter hate and Twitter abuse in the news section. The EU has had enough. Democrats in the US Congress have had enough. We\u2019ve all had enough.<\/p>\n When I see hatred paired with ignorance so equally, as is often the case on Twitter, it\u2019s incredibly difficult to resist the urge to argue.<\/p>\n I could. I could go on and on with logical arguments and explanations for every stubborn citizen that still argues against gun control in this country. I could troll back the trolls. I\u2019ve been trolled enough to know, at least somewhere in my brain, that what trolls say is as useless as my own carbon footprint. But I still feel the sting. And after my own run-ins with trolls on a personal level, I admit that I avoid it.<\/p>\n But there is a new matutinal practice that relieves me of all this combined stress.<\/p>\n I report people.<\/p>\n I report all kinds of people.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve read through Twitter\u2019s TOS, many times. I\u2019ve read all the stories. Twitter promises to crack down on hate speech. Twitter is updating its community guidelines. Twitter is working harder to un-break what\u2019s already broken. Even last night Jack Dorsey promised to crack down on hate<\/a> with more aggressive rules.<\/p>\n If Twitter really cares about what\u2019s going down on the platform, and if Twitter really believes that part of the solution is community reporting, then I\u2019m going to be the best vigilante of all of the Twittersphere.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/RSSPoster_PRO\/cache\/f5763_horrified.gif?resize=380%2C285&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\n